INTRODUCTION: In
1994 the Audley and District Family History Society began a long-term project to
record the memories of miners who worked in the pits in the area covering Talke,
Audley, Chesterton, Leycett and Silverdale. Doug Johnson is a member of
the society and responded by writing his recollections down. The society
would be happy to receive any contributions to this project, either written as
in this example, or gathered through an interview. Please contact either
Ian Bailey or Stan Brassington (addresses in Introduction).

Starting Work

I attended the Technical School at Burslem and did reasonably well. The
head got me an interview with a firm of mining and estate agents in Newcastle
together with another boy. He got the job, probably because he had a smart
tweed suit and looked the part. He wasn't any better than me at school and
I felt a bit peeved. The man in charge offered to put me in touch with the
Chief Surveyor of the Shelton Iron, Steel & Coal Co who lived in a posh house in
Newcastle and I eventually made arrangements to go and see him at home.
Later I had an interview at Hanley Deep Pit, where I proudly took along some of
my drawings, which he didn't seem too interested in. He offered to take me
on as an articled pupil for 3 years, explaining that I really ought to be paying
him, but as I would need some pocket money I would get 10s per week. It
will be forever stamped on my memory as the way he described the job and the way
it turned out could not have been more different.

I reported to Kent's Lane at 8.30 am to meet the people I was to work with in
the summer of 1941. There was an Assistant Surveyor in charge of things at
Kent's Lane and a boy helper who lived in Silverdale and was a bit older than
myself. He was the one who got me into bad habits like chewing tobacco.
He could also spit further than I could. The Assistant Surveyor was
a red-haired man with a goitre and also a violent temper when roused. He
occasionally took his rage out on my colleague, who did not take the job
seriously and was not really interested in surveying. The manager at the
pit was a little man who wore breeches and flew off the handle at the slightest
provocation. The belts on the longwall faces in the Spencroft seam were
constantly running off the rollers, due mainly to roof falls and the belt track
getting out of line. He would demand that we would have to whitewash a new
line on the coal face roof to set the props to and reinstate a straight belt.
This usually meant we two lads working nights (known as the fettling shift) to
carry out his wishes. The accessories were two old paint cans, a bag of lime,
some old brushes and, of course, water. We were trained as surveyors to
project straight lines as a matter of course using safety lamps and lines of
string suspended from the roof in screw eyes fixed in rawlplugs, or whatever
means of suspension we could devise. These would have to be offset, until
eventually a gap was found between the maze of steel props and while the coal
cutters and shot firing proceeded. We were regarded as a bit of a
nuisance. Getting a straight line was one thing. Lying on your back
in a 2 feet 6 inch seam, painting a line on the roof with limewhite topped up
with urine, was not my idea of mining surveying, but we did it and got no
thanks. The props to the new belt would be lined up and the belt pans and
all the other paraphernalia re-set and bolted up and hopefully the day shift
would have a straight belt running smoothly on which to pitch the coal from
their stints. (A stint usually meant about 5 yards long of coal face and
the contents which were allocated to each collier for the shift. The coal
had been previously cut, bored and fired the night before. This process
always happened at night and the loosened coal was broken up, big pieces thrown
on the belt by hand and the remainder shovelled on. A collier's
shovel was by other standards huge.) The height in which they worked was
reduced by the cutter slattings which lay on the floor about 9 inches thick.
They were very sharp and played havoc with your knees.

Kent's Lane: a neglected
pit

Kent's Lane, when I started, was not the foremost of modern pits. It was
run down and neglected by Shelton and its seams, particularly Spencroft, were
subject to sudden roof falls which spilt out wet fireclay like porridge without
warning and lives sadly were lost. I remember one occasion when we two
lads were sent to put up fresh lines in a new road being driven through the gob
(waste) between two airways, when a roof fall occurred trapping us in a short
stretch of road about 10 yards long. Fortunately, there was a compressed
air line, which gave us a bit of oxygen. We kept banging on the pipe,
hoping someone would find us. The boss called at the lamp checkout at
about 5.30 pm to see if we were up the pit and promptly raised the alarm when we
were not. The fall was several yards long and by the time our
rescuers reached us our lamp batteries had nearly run out.

Eventually, Spencroft was closed and I remember the eerie task of doing the
closing survey, accompanied by a fireman checking for gas every few yards.
Falls were usually preceded by what miners call bitting and in a silent place a
few bits meant scamper quickly.

When the banksman, who was a bit of a comic, looked down at my brand new size 10
steel toe capped pit boots, he used the "f"word. It was his main adjective
as it was with many pit men. "Effing hell, two effing feet, one effing
yard!" But not our boss. He was an altar server and when he got
heated the worst adjective he used was "melting". One day he got really
upset and said bloody. He was depressed for days because he had allowed
himself to really swear!

The offices of Kent's Lane could not have changed for a hundred years. The
glass in the windows was black with coal dust and the desks were Victorian high
desks with tall stools. The surveyors table was a huge construction in the
middle of the office and, before we could roll any plans out, everything had to
be dusted.

The surveyor's job

Surveyors were a bit of a mystery to the rest of the pit and were known as
"Dialers" or in N.S. accent, "Doilers". The reason for this was their use
of the Miners' Dial. This is a compass-like instrument, the forerunner of
the theodolite, for measuring angles. The one we had at Kent's Lane was
the oldest on the company and was made by a firm called Casatelli. It had
open fold-up/fold-down sights, a 360 degree face with a magnetic needle and a
Vernier scale enabling angles to be read to the nearest 3 minutes. The
daft part about this was the fact that the sights had copper wires in one and a
pin hole in the other. Sighting onto an oil lamp flame several hundred
yards away in the dark was a work of art and a bit inaccurate when the flame
flickered.

The prime requirement of mining surveyors in the private days before
nationalisation was to assess and calculate the amount of coal mined in each
seam below given areas on the surface, each month. Not a lot of people
know this! The most important job, it follows, is to carry out, at an
early stage in the mine's development, a correlation survey relating the
underground development with the surface map. Not many surveyors have the
opportunity to take part in such a task.

The man in charge of the lamps and check out was known as Peggy on account of
his gammy leg. Getting a lamp with a good battery or a safety lamp with a
decent wick required stealth and craft. He had an enormous chip on his
shoulder, but always made sure the bosses' handlamps were polished until they
shone!

Transfer to Holditch

After a couple of years I was sent to Holditch Colliery which had its own
surveyor, a Welshman. His visits underground were infrequent, but
kept a tight rein on what was going on and put me in charge of the other two
lads for most of the time. He would always take charge of the quarterly
surveys required by statute under the Coal Mines Act, but, after a trial period,
left most of the surveying work to me. If we were shorthanded at our
busiest times, an extra surveyor came in from Hanley Deep Pit.

Holditch was a different cup of tea to Kent's Lane. It was the Company's
show pit by comparison, well appointed modern offices, canteen and baths, well
equipped workshops and high production of good quality thick coal. The
Great Row seam was the thickest.

The surveyor's biggest problem during working hours is travelling from district
to district, via the main haulage routes. In the 40s most of these roads
were constructed with steel rings fish plated together and set approximately 2
feet 6 inches apart, boarded over with 1 inch sawn boards. These roads
could be quite narrow single track with tubs drawn on direct ropes and virtually
no space at the sides, just the occasional manhole to dive into. The ropes
used to whip up and down and there were places where they had sawn grooves in
the rings. The wider roads with two tracks, one empty and one loaded, were
better, but faster, especially on the gradients. At Kent's Lane, all the
haulage engines were air driven and simply controlled by the turn of a lever.
The haulage hands controlled them with great dexterity and speed and did not
like to be held up by "dialers" travelling their routes like pack horses, loaded
up with tackle. It was not unusual to be reminded by a quick snatch on a
journey (train of tubs) that you were "in the bloody way." Holditch was
more civilised, all the mechanical equipment was electrically driven including
the conveyor belts. There were even electric lights in some places!

Sampling air and dust -
to get the "right" results

An overseer I worked with at Holditch had the responsibility for air and dust
sampling and also safety. He was qualified fireman, and taught me some of
the arts and crafts of meeting the regulations which, as most miners know, if
carried out to the letter would have closed the pit. I have often wondered
how many inspectors of mines knew that also.

In order to record the correct sampling of mine dust, mine plans were divided
into 1 chain (22 yard) lengths of different colour codes. Officially, what
was supposed to happen was for the dust sampler to brush off a sample of dust
from the roof, the side and the floor of the various roadways into a tin and
mark this with the reference from the map. A batch of about 24 tins each
week would go to the laboratory for testing, theoretically ensuring that a good
selection of samples from all over the pit was being tested for combustible
matter content. If any failed, or exceeded about 5%, the area from which
the tin originated would be doused with stone dust. A fine theory but one
which would have resulted in all tins containing about 90% combustible matter,
had it been carried out. Miners hated stone dust. They thought it was more
responsible for silicosis than coal dust. And managers hated bad results.
A "good" sampler would settle down in a quiet air road, spread out a newspaper
and tip on half a bag of stone dust, add a handful or so of the surrounding dust
on the floor, give it a good stir, sieve it through a lamp gauze and fill the
tins. It had two advantages, a) it took about half an hour instead of all
day and b) it usually produced one or two bad samples and the rest
satisfactory. Good news for the manager and bad news for the suppliers of
stone dust. A few bags, scattered in the area decided by the tin
reference, kept everybody happy. I had many guilty thoughts about this
business, but have hidden behind those who gave the orders at the time.

The boss underground

Holditch was visited occasionally by the general manager of the company.
This was a time when the surveyor and pit manager joined the entourage,
and also the General Manager's son, who was the Agent. I knew this
gentleman well: he was our signals sergeant in the colliery platoon of the Home
Guard and some unrepeatable Mainwaring-like things took place which are still
good for a laugh. The group would traverse the best parts of the pit, all
carrying hand lamps with very strong beams, so their impending approach was no
secret.

One of the last jobs I did at Holditch, before joining the Fleet Air Arm, was to
carry out the opening survey at the old footrail at Apedale, which was an
exciting experience to see old workings opened up and put into production again.
I also did a surface survey over hundreds of acres, including the colliery tip
and the environs of the colliery generally, in order to update all the original
surface plans and check the correlation to the underground plans.

By the way, after I had worn out my first and only pair of pit boots, I went
over to clogs, which took a bit of getting used to, but were very comfortable
and light. There was a chap who used to make these by hand in a shed at
the side of the road near Hanley Deep Pit, just by the old Port Vale ground.
I think in this particular area there was a cottage industry of boot and shoe
making. My grandfather, George Rowe, lived in the vicinity as a young man
and he was then a shoemaker, also his father and grandfather, shoe and boot
makers.

Return from the forces -
and out of the industry

I should point out that the times I describe are from 1941-4. Things had
not changed much when I returned from the Fleet Air Arm in 1947. All the
stones round the roundabout at Holditch had been whitewashed and the NCB flag
fluttered from the mast. I did not feel welcome. Staff who I worked
with had naturally been promoted and resented someone who had originally been in
charge of them returning to take up his old job. The staff wage for a surveyor
with the NCB had risen to £2-3-6 per week in 1947, the same as an office clerk.
I was offered a rise of 5 shillings a week to go to Leycett to run the surveying
side there, but turned this down to take a job in local government as a
surveyor. I seem to remember that this was the only time I had seen my
master since I started at Kent's Lane. I remember him saying that the 5
shillings would more than cover my busfare and when I appeared unhappy, he said,
"Well anyway, you've got a bike haven't you?"

Mining "left its marks on
me"

Three and a bit years in the pit left its marks on me. In 1943 during a
Sunday night shift I was gassed in a heading when I had set the theodolite for a
young assistant to take the reading, fearing it might be safer for him to stay
at the bottom and me to hold the lamp at the top, knowing the likelihood of gas.
I went out with a bang, fell 20 yards or so down the heading and crashed into
the theodolite. I still bear the scars.

The man in Newcastle, who crowned one of my teeth, when trying to match a front
one, rattled his drawer, pulled out a selection, showed me one and said, "It'll
'ave to do, there's a bloody war on you know!"